


Like The New Born

by Sevent



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Underage Relationship(s), Loss of Identity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 16:40:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18056207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sevent/pseuds/Sevent
Summary: "His one eye shoots open, sees the shadow of a person, and his body prepares for another beating, a finisher.Slade starts when he sees the telltale pattern of a domino mask and red fabric. Robin."Written for a kink prompt: "loss of identity" & "hurt/comfort"





	Like The New Born

The first thing his mind comes back to is the cold.

Then the smell of wet, rust-rich earth. A sensation like chafed skin under his trimmed beard. His eye opens and he’s met with the dark spider-web of steel frames shielding part of the sky, storm clouds overhead. The clear reflective lights of nearby city life float like dust spots in his vision. It’s nighttime.

Slade doesn’t know how long he’s been lying on the soup-muddy ground of a torn up construction site, soaked, passed out, as rain poured through the gaps and layers of his armor and underarmor. Deeper still until everything clings to his body like second skin and it sucks what little heat his body conjures up.

There was a job. Not easy money, no. Something so banal would harm his reputation and his fun. The contract Slade picked up fit within the parameters of the difficulty he looks for in a job, and the money promised would be worth it. One target, sniper request, evidence to be destroyed, but witnesses to be left alone. Odd specifics for a first-time client, but interesting enough to keep the merc listening. His memory becomes hazier the longer he thinks on it, and the more a sharp pain like hot pins and needles crawls over his skull. Had he completed the mission? Deathstroke never leaves a contract unfinished.

_Don’t think about that right now,_ Slade reasons as a low ache flares up in his joints. He has to self-assess whatever damage has been done.

Awareness comes in battered pieces. Slow, easy, fading away again after a couple of stuttering seconds. It’s what worries him more than the pain that filters in by stages. His left femur aches. Bullet impact, no break in the bone. Just a hair’s width of a fracture that’s already healing itself. Slade tests his hands and finds that they respond well-enough, but his reaction isn’t as sharp or quick as it should be. It feels clumsy and rigid. Head injury? Brain damage? He brings up a heavy palm to paw at his helmet’s side and finds it missing, though his eyepatch remains perfectly rain-bloated over his right socket. Head injury fast becomes a one-hundred percent possibility.

A bit of graceless prodding at the temples doesn’t reveal any more pain, not on the surface level. Must either be healed up already and he’s just suffering the aftereffects of a bad blow, or worse, his nerves are so fucked they’re numb to sensation. The latter's gonna feel a hell of a lot worse if it proves true, and being out in the rain won’t do him any better.

Slade shifts his weight onto a trembling hand and grunts as it buckles under the weight, the wrist locking up from the cold. Nothing stops him from tipping to his side and onto the part of his head that’s numb to sensation. More fist-sized injuries flare up that don’t fit the brunt damage caused by bullets, and he swears colorfully. That kind of damage is not something any ordinary fighter could deal on him. He must have met with another meta. A cape, considering. And knowing his luck in these rainy east coast cities, a bat. But a _gun_ used against him? Doesn’t make sense.

The cold beats harder against his useless armor and the shivers that rake his frame get stronger. Slade can’t put a leg underneath himself to steady up without losing his balance, and if that's fucked, hell. He needs to check himself into a warehouse or a motel, somewhere private and insulated, away from the elements, but his boots sink into the mud and a wave of dizziness and weakness hits him like he’s nothing more than a stray animal starved in a seedy, disgusting street. Except he’s not lost in some nameless street, he’s sunken between loose steel beams, his back and fractured leg throbbing like one huge bruise over the smaller bruises and—ah. The pieces start falling together with more context.

There _had_ been a bat of sorts slipping into his sniper’s nest, a simple yoga mat that overlooked the office window of his mark with perfect concealment. From atop the unfinished skyscraper, the whole city was at his mercy, the beams and the glow of lightning hiding the glare of his sniper's sights. He can’t recall right if he’d struck a bullet true through the forecasted downpour. A batarang or grapple line cut the barrel of his weapon, something like a baseball hit the side of his helmet and—the details fall apart after that. Strong, stronger than expected punches. More bullets fired, grappling hands over his slicked wet armor, and then a fall through unstable flooring. Slade remembers a flash of deep red. Blood?

This had been a real fight. Not the kind that the capes usually dish out. They hold back.

This one didn’t.

His thoughts fog up for a second under the renewed pressure of a headache growing suspiciously on his numb side. Pins and needles turn uncomfortable, bordering on a disorienting sensation. The cold physically hurts. Slade rolls over on the ground, giving up for a minute to catch some air and let some more of that freezing water seep past every microscopic gap that exists in his clothes, down to his bones. It won’t kill him, but it sure is fucking itchy. He’ll give props to whoever dared to take him down before. They actually did take him down and keep him out of it.

In hindsight, Slade should have figured that whoever has that kind of relentless drive and the means to hunt the Deathstroke would have stuck around to see their fight through. But he’s distracted. So when the rain stops just over the crown of his head in the shape of an ellipse, and the sky darkens impossibly more in the hours of past-midnight, his one eye shoots open, sees the shadow of a person, and his body prepares for another beating, a finisher.

Slade starts when he sees the telltale pattern of a domino mask and red fabric. Robin. Except. 

Except the face is a little longer, more jaunt, and his cheeks rest higher on his face. His clothes are just as wet as Slade’s so he can see one step ahead of how the boy’s body is shaped wrong. There’s more weight in his shoulders, his arms, his calves. More height and mass. The Robin he’s known doesn’t thicken up with fat that way. He’s too disciplined in athleticism and flair. Putting on weight unbalances him.

“Who—“ Slade immediately stops before he can cough up a thick glob of something borne in his lungs that’s suspiciously tangy like phlegm. He doesn’t need to embarrass himself anymore. The kid—a fucking teenager—already beat his ass through the ceiling floor. There’s a gap right where he knows he must have crashed through, where the storm clouds persist. Fucking hell.

The boy doesn’t answer, he just keeps leaning over him and doing a half motion that means he wants to do something, but he’s not sure what it’ll be yet. Probably doesn’t even know if it’s to help or to knock Deathstroke out again. Funny, that. Slade doesn’t know what he would appreciate more.

Immediate action seems far-fetched though, so Slade closes his eye and breathes, swallows back the annoying tickle in his throat and whatever disgusting feeling is stuck there, and rolls back onto the mud on his shaking hands and feet. It’s no better than the first try, but at least this time he can keep his balance, frozen as he is in that position.

Once the merc is sure he’s not about to tip over pitifully, he speaks up with the calmest, clearest voice he can muster.

“Kid, what the hell.”

‘Kid’ and his domino-masked eyes twitch like he’s blinking under there. Seems to put him back in his mind’s state of action.

“Deathstroke.” The voice is definitely not Grayson’s and it’s got that deceptively strange pitch to it that spells potential murder. A rare thing. A _strange_ thing to read off of a supposed cape.

Alright.

if there’s one thing Slade has learned handling volatile people on the opposing side is that a little unexpected and cold-cut conversation puts them in a more reasonable mood, so of course he badgers, “Are you going to crack my skull open again or is there some other reason you’re waiting up there like an umbrella?”

The boy frowns, looks a fraction to the side and away from Slade, and hunches down. He blocks a bit more of the rain from falling over the beaten and bloodied merc’s face but it’s hardly going to do anything now that he’s drenched like a sewer rat and possibly just as filthy.

Something must show on his face about what he’s thinking—and that just won’t do, if he’s got tells so telegraphed that even a stranger, a kid, could pick on them—because the kid grabs under one armpit and drags him over to a sheltered part of the half-done building. It’s absolutely awful, being physically dragged like he weights just twenty pounds instead of two-hundred and his body gives one full body throb that locks his joints up so he can’t shake the boy off. The worst part is, the mud covering every part of his suit makes the task so easy. His knees slide on the mud, and his hands feel arthritic. Kid even settles him down on his side instead of his face with a careful touch. It pulls an involuntary growl from the older man's chest. The boy jerks back at that, then flashes his own teeth as a challenge. Like it’s a natural exchange, a how-do-you-do between two perfectly sane people.

“Robin,” he warns, unthinking, and something about the title makes the boy go pale as a sheet, and isn’t that the most interesting accidental rile Slade’s ever gotten out of a cape in recent memory. That kind of fear is special. He didn’t, however, really mean to scare the living spirits out of the young thing.

Considering the kid voluntarily pulled him from the rain to drier land just now, he’s not too worried about imminent death. Of course that might have been a reflex, helping Slade instead of putting him out of his misery.

That’s when the rest of his regenerative metagene decides to catch up and his head bursts into complete fire, seething, tearing pain cracking under his eye sockets like a live wire over water. It throws him completely out of breath and now he’s shivering again, colder somehow even as his head melts through the ground as if lava pours out of his ears. It’s the middle of dumb-fucking October and his body temperature plummets like it's Siberian winter.

Slade is busy hissing through his teeth to really notice what the kid is saying but there’s another pair of shaking hands parting the hair on his head where it hurts worst. “H-hey. What the fuck, old man.” He sounds soft and just as uncertain. But the sound of his own voice seems to center the kid into control. Banter, jokes. Slade clings to that for sanity. That was Robin’s best strength in a fight. The truth of it comes to Slade unbidden. Old comforts. “You seriously gonna die right now from a headshot? Shit didn’t even land square through your dumb candy-colored bike helmet. That’s pathetic, man."

If Slade wasn’t sure before now, he sure as shit is now that that is not the Robin he knows.

“Can the insults, I’ve come back from worse.” It’s true. Doesn’t make it any easier each time, but he’ll live on sheer spite alone. His head gives an ill-timed throb, fire licking up his spine as if to prove him wrong. “ _Shit_ , you’re a terrible shot.” The only reason it hurts this much is because the bullet must have not landed on a clean angle. It might actually still be lodged in his head somewhere.

“No I’m not, you just heard me cocking the damn gun and moved out of my sights, or did you conveniently forget that? You remember your name?"

Slade knows that game, and he’s no fool to give away his name. He hisses out a threatening, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” and that shuts the kid up, maybe a little too pointedly. Perhaps his assumptions are wrong and he’s dealing with a territorial bastard wearing the deceptive guise of Slade’s old favorite adversary, something like a mockery of the original.

He knows almost immediately that he’s wrong there, too. The kid wilts, retreats inward and away from the present. Something haunted lurks behind those hidden eyes. Slade looks away with the pretense to focus on not screaming from the burning pain.

“You called me Robin. That’s not who I am. Not anymore.”

“Not anymore,” Slade repeats, testing the words through gritted molars so as to not stutter. Rain isn’t pelting him anymore so the shivers that run through him are purely his own body’s to blame on, and entirely unnecessary with how his head is burning. The boy returns just close enough to put a clammy hand gently over the flayed wound of Slade's head, even with the merc looking out to an unfinished wall. They’re both freezing. A little bit of warmth passes through the touch to Slade.

Slade uses the distracting touch to push through the next stage of his recovery. “Then what do I call you, since you seem to know who I am?”

“I—“ The kid struggles with the freedom to speak of something he hasn’t been allowed to, ever. Capes don’t share names, though it might become known to them, from inference. Just as it might become known to their enemies, and their families. A whole gaggle of people sharing one big damning secret. Slade isn't stupid, and he doesn't need an answer either. Connecting dots quickly is how he stays ahead of the game, and he’s been connecting them since he laid eyes on the boy’s uniform.

Jason Todd, the fallen Robin. The dead one. How he rose from the shallow grave he was buried in, Slade doesn’t care or worry too much about. What he’s more focused on is getting through this night and never speaking of it to anyone, ever. Talking over the pain helps, if only to pass the time as his body acclimates with a new, growing piece of a cranium and chunky nerve endings.

Hands hover over the merc’s shoulders, uncertain until the moment passes and they settle uselessly over the boy’s—Jason's knees. Kid sounds bitter when he speaks, “I’m…what does it matter who I am, old man.”

Slade refrains from full-on sighing, though he does hum. There's no avoiding whatever inner battle Jason has with himself. Kid can't even offer a simple answer to the question of a name. But then something snaps back into place and Slade's whole body jerks, the hot pain in his head cresting before it starts to fade altogether. Something pings on the ground and he knows it to be the bullet. It's finally out, Jason seems to notice too.

The boy's hand parts the white hair again and touches tender healing skin carefully. Exhaustion immediately settles in and Slade wants to sleep for an age, but he can't just stay here out in the open. And he's also not one to give up on a wily attempt to figure the kid out so, he tries once more.

“You shot me. No one else.”

Jason grunts, “Yeah.”

_“You.”_

Kid takes it to mean a jab at his skill and visibly becomes angrier, hands clenching strands of hair tighter in a fist. “Yeah, what the fuck about it.”

Slade may have some patience left in him for people he views as worth it, but he’s wounded, aggravated, and slightly humiliated, and there’s a little of that delicateness showing when he tries to push Jason into the right direction.

“You knew where to find me, when to intercept. That’s impressive." The last bit he adds more for Jason's nerves, but it is the truth. Slade understands there is a time to placate with honest praise. Seeing the slow-forming blush on the kid's face he thinks, yes, this was one of those times. "You act like a bat, and that isn't a jab at your training. You make a formidable fighter. But _that_ is definitely not something a bat uses.”

‘That’ is the .45 mm caliber handgun holstered on Jason's hip. They both know what Slade means by it. Capes don’t kill, and Bats don’t use guns.

The kid is quiet. “Maybe I’m something else. Something worse.”

Kid's fists shake, a barely noticeable thing if it wasn't pressed up against Slade's skull. He's obviously unsettled, confused even as he clings to a mercenary he was ready to kill just an hour prior. He clings to life, to mercy, the way he had always been told to.

Slade shuts his eye and breathes slow and heavy. Brings the injured leg closer to his chest when it aches. He rotates his wrists around and finds no lag or lingering pain. “You’re no cold-blooded murderer, kid. But you’re no hero either.”

Jason scoffs. “I don’t wanna be a hero. I just want to make a real difference.”

Yeah, definitely a bat. A little off-track, maybe, but the same bull-horned drive is there. And yet it’s familiar to something Slade feels. Something he’s long ago accepted of this world. The kid is just starting to pull back the curtain and see the inner workings of the darker matters that run beneath the stage, turned around as he is and struggling with a new kind of playing field. Nothing is ever as simple as a black and white checkerboard with straight-forward rules. Sometimes you need to make a few heads roll to be the change you want to see in the world.

“And what will that difference be?”

Slade already knows which difference is the kind he makes. _One target, sniper request, evidence to be destroyed, but witnesses to be left alone._ Would Jason ever reach that point? He doubts it, but everyone has their limits tested every now and then.

And as Jason thinks over what Slade's asking of him, Slade shoots up a fisted hand hooked straight for his nose. A set of half-finished curses fly at the merc, warbled under a hand. Jason is immediately on the offensive, responsive, but he's still taken by surprise while Slade is already standing and on the move with surprising speed for a man who was pretty incapacitated just a couple minute prior. There will be no second fight tonight, not as the man unhooks a zipline from a hip pouch and rappels down a preprepared escape wire down the side of the building and into the shadows of the city below. Before Jason can do anything about it, Slade is gone, disappearing between low roofs and a moonless sky.

Jason will blame himself for giving away his trust like that. For dropping his guard in sympathy. It will be a lesson he won't forget.

The next evening, Slade delivers a bullet straight through his mark’s forehead, cashes in on a quarter of a million dollars, and drops off the face of the Earth for some downtime. He doesn’t think about lost, aimless eyes searching for an answer to a question Slade had meant as a trick to buy time. It had worked. They’ll cross roads again. And maybe by then, Slade will have forgotten the tendril of kinship he felt with that lost boy who would perish, forgotten between one gang fight and the next.

Maybe he’ll find a determined, young man hooded with a blood-red helmet and a wicked fast trigger finger instead. Someone who won't overestimate his own skill.


End file.
